What are the implications of a telco like Smart (Philippines) partnering with Rocket Internet to launch a payments product, and is it likely to succeed?

The implications can be mixed. Rocket Internet already owns a payments company called: Paymill (see: https://www.paymill.com/). One of the architects of the this deal would most likely be Mohamed Omaizat, who is Director Global Venture Development. Mohamed comes from a payments background and used to be at Skrill previously.

If Rocket had tried to just push a vanilla payment system by juxtaposing one of Paymill's capability into Philippines, it would have been a disaster. Perhaps it can be said with a lot of certainty, Omaizat is responsible for ensuring this does happen, i.e. foolish payments related decisions are not made.

Omaizat has travelled to all the countries where Rocket has significant presence, so he has on-ground feedback, which many companies ignore or have very little of.

I think Smart brings to the table, that crucial feedback as to what sort of payment solution is in need, for which Smart would find it appropriate to partner with someone external. There is no shortage of resources (human or otherwise) that Smart could not have acquired on its own.

I think it will be interesting to see how it rolls out. Rocket certainly has its own properties in Philippines on which this payment system can run.

I think if Rocket+Smart can get the traction they need, this payment system could become a catalyst of how payment could be done in the region!

I for one, am optimistic about it.